From guest blogger and ASICentral Director Samantha Tucker who has exited her code cave to write a blog!

Those of you who’ve read Michele Bell’s latest blog post, With a Little Help From My Friends… learned that respect and appreciation for one’s coworkers and superiors abounds at ASI (for the second year in a row, ASI was awarded a Best Places to Work award). Motivated by Miss Bell’s incredibly gracious tribute to her coworkers, I felt compelled to bring up a few points of my own.

I recently discovered that my boss, Executive Vice President/Publisher Rich Fairfield, is even smarter than I’d realized. The first day I began work at ASI, I attended our weekly team meeting, and the next day Rich left for a series of business trips over a three-week period. Rich called to check in with me (from China!) and see if I had everything I needed, and then trusted me to figure out the requirements of my new project on my own. At the time it was of course a bit scary, wondering if I had completed the tasks correctly, but I quickly realized I was exceptionally fortunate in my new position with ASI.

One of Rich’s personality traits that particularly encourages and motivates me is that he takes the time to truly help his employees, and he’s given me absolutely priceless advice. In previous jobs (and those of some of my friends and family members, as well), managers have wanted to retain control to the extent that they believed sharing advice would make them less powerful. The difference with Rich is that he realizes he needs to help his employees to be the very best they can be in order for the employees and the company to truly be successful.

Oh … and one more thing: Rich is always willing to listen to (and actually *hear*) any ideas we may have. Did you notice I italicized the word “listen”? We’ll get to that point later.

As I mentioned, Rich is our publisher at ASI. ASI publishes five magazines, and Kathy Huston, editor of Advantages magazine, covered “Regional Sales Report, Top Markets, Hot Sellers” in the latest issue. Perusing the table of contents, my eye caught one specific feature article entitled “Southern Hospitality.” Being the Southerner I am, obviously I found this quite intriguing, and wondered how on-point the article really was.

I began reading the article, and when I flipped to the second page of the feature, there was a definite audible gasp that was likely heard in California. My boss, Rich Fairfield, Publisher, Executive Vice President of Listening, and approver of said article, was privy to a secret of mine and last month approved publishing that secret to the 40,000 individuals that subscribe to Advantages magazine.

Was my secret buried in a short sentence or two within the article? Oh no, my secret was on display in a large green box entitled “Fun Fact,” complete with large text and an associated image. My secret is definitely noticeable, and I fear that it is likely time for me to discontinue the use of this particular form of “Southern hospitality.”

So when Rich briefly mentioned the April issue of Advantages magazine in our meeting this afternoon, and questioned my reaction, well, I had done already taken a notion to go on ahead and take a gander at that there article. To all ya’ll that have not had the privilege of reading the article, if you want to know my secret you’ll have to read it.

Many thanks to all ya’ll, including my wonderful coworkers, Tim Andrews, Norman Cohn (even though every time I see him I happen to be carrying a piece of cake and, without fail, he asks me what it is that I’ve brought him), and last but certainly not least, Rich Fairfield. Bless your big heart.

As an aside, it appears that Kathy may have missed something when she was researching that feature article. My fellow Southern cousin, Kevin Tucker, Director of Momentum for Collide LLC, (true title, there is also a Director of Trajectory) opened my eyes to a shockingly, not-so-hospitable Southern find documented in the following photo:

2 Comments

Ezequiel Says:

next took the sbucejt several magnitudes higher in value. She wanted us to comprehend the motivations of history — the deeply visceral, human issues with what can somewhat be a deadly dry sbucejt. Jaime Escalante of “Stand and Deliver” fame, dared to dream big. Calculus for the typically dropout crowd? Pushing them to go on to college? Wow. And I’ve this book called, “Calculus Made Easy,” by Sylvanus P. Thompson, first published in 1910. It’s been through lots of printings all to make a super easy sbucejt simple. What are we able to do to create more teachers who inspire world-changing brilliance? Einstein once declared that imagination is a lot more important than knowledge. Knowledge can provide you with the foundation. Imagination usually takes you to the stars. Don’t our children ought to get better?